Klutz or Age?

Doesn’t really matter, they both suck. I know I can blame most of my occasional wobbliness and balance issues on my back surgeries. It doesn’t rear its ugly head often, but when it does, it comes in a way that I am either embarrassed or irritated at myself. I haven’t fallen in a long time, and I defensively avoid any situation that will cause it to happen. Jumping from rock to rock crossing a river or at Lake Tahoe is virtually never going to happen, because I’m just not going to climb around anymore. I am perfectly happy looking at whatever I can see from the solid stance on the trail. We have large rocks around our place and not five years ago, I used to walk around on them like it was nothing. Now, unless I have something in my hand providing a cheater balance, I won’t even try. Slips and falls are the biggest fear as you get older. The biggest disability is thinking we’re twenty and can still do it. I balk at a lot things that don’t necessarily make me ponder how hard the ground is, but more about how it’s going to feel if I should make solid contact with it. Things like stepping up on the bumper of my truck, or even worse, stepping back over from the bed to bumper blindly. Recently, after my banana peel incident, I can’t get out of the seat of my truck without making sure nothing is on the ground. I can’t work in the drainage ditch without making sure I have a balancing point of contact. Stairs require my complete attention down and more importantly, for my knees sake, going up. Riding a bike scares the hell out of me, not while riding, the getting on and off. Getting in and out of a pool requires a relaxation of my hands from the rail with a death grip going in or out. I was jumping an inch off the ground with Gwendolyn over the Portal, and I was cheating, only jumping one leg off the ground. Thank goodness she’s only a couple years old. I’m sure two back surgeries have created an acceleration of the inevitable reality that comes with age. The weirdest thing is that the body and the mind have somehow grown a gap in this reality. My mind has not aged at the same rate as my body and for most of us, this is why many of us experience the awkwardness of age. Getting on a roof will never happen again. Climbing a ladder over twelve feet comes with a feeling that everything is moving below me. Just about anything that has the potential to create an unsteady situation, I avoid like the plague. Is it because I’ve developed some kind of klutziness with the surgeries over the last 15 years or is just age? I don’t know for sure, but I know one is inevitable for all of us and the other just adds an acceleration factor unknown to the exact ratio of instability.

I mentioned the banana peel incident and it is the most recent of things that have made me feel stupid, caused pain, and created some anxiety for just opening a door and stepping out onto the ground. I had gone to the big local box hardware store to get trim to finish up Jen’s new studio, classroom, and office. Simple right? Nothing to worry about, in fact, I was really getting into the music I was listening too on the ride to the store. Pulled into a handicap spot, the only advantage to having two back surgeries and a knee replacement, slid out of the seat while looking across the parking lot at some storage buildings and the next thing I know, I was grabbing at thin air with my right hand, while catching my fall with my left elbow on the threshold of the truck door. My left leg shot out from under me like I had stepped on ice and my right leg buckled under the downward move of my body. I collected myself and pushed my way back up to standing, looked down and saw a fresh banana peel. I couldn’t have been there for more than a few minutes and I just stared at it in disbelief. Two thoughts came to mind. Who throws a banana peel on the ground in handicap parking? The only answer to that is it was some deranged sicko that preys on old people falling to get a laugh. The other, who the hell slips on a banana peel? Outside of cartoons and some old-time vaudevillian acts, I’m going to guess less than some fractional percentage of the populace. I thought hard about whether to tell Jen about it, but in the end, she is my own personal nurse and once she was sure I was ok was chuckling under her breathe. Right about then, our oldest daughter called, who is a nurse mind you, called and Jen of course had to share my embarrassing slip, too which she replied, “now that I know you’re okay, that is fucking hilarious!”. Of course, by this time, I was beginning to laugh at myself and we all shared in a moment tear-filled laughter. Later, I thought that I was happy I was here for everyone’s amusement and even posted on Facebook so that I could spread happiness to all my friends. At this point, I’m still getting new aches on my body and my elbow is a falling pain level, but the bruise hasn’t even surfaced, which should be a doozy when it finally appears.

My last fall, prior to the banana slipping incident, I saw some guys in my yard, so I went over to check on what they were doing. Satisfied they had purpose; I began picking up sticks while talking to them. When I stepped out of the ditch, I used a big stick I had picked up and just has I was bringing up my back foot, the stick broke. This sent me into a ten to fifteen step attempt to gain my balance, but finally realizing unless I wanted to land on cement, I better go ahead and go to the ground in the grass. Both guys came running to help me and making sure I was okay. Just embarrassed and couldn’t get in the house fast enough and find wherever my pride went and get it back.

Last September, we went to South Lake Tahoe with one of our daughters, husband, and granddaughter. They had arranged for a day of bike riding on electric bikes. I was excited, but when we pulled up in front of the bikes, my anxiety kicked in. It wasn’t riding it, it was getting on and off of it without catching a toe and falling over the bike head first onto the ground. What really happened in the long run was my knees hurting from not having enough length in stride. I ended up using the electric function exclusively and had a ball. Jen, on the other hand, fell twice. I wasn’t around for either time as I was zooming ahead full power, but our son-in-law witnessed both and helped her up. No worse for wear, just embarrassed, which we both are too familiar with whether we like it or not.

Following my first surgery, I was standing in the kitchen on the phone, when our lab came walking by. I lightly reached out with my foot to give him a mock kick. In no more than a second, I was on my back looking up with the phone still to my ear. The person on the other end asked if I had just fallen to which I responded that is exactly what I did, but nothing was screaming, so I guess I’m okay. Within a few months of that, I fell three more times. One stepping off a, eighteen-inch-high step, and in the slow motion of all falls, I was able to reconcile my checkbook and think quite clearly that I was about to fall. I did and thank goodness no one saw it. Second was walking up the stairs at work with lunch in hand and my foot missed the next step up, crashing my knee into the step instead. Again, no witnesses, so it is suspect as to whether I would confirm that it happened and wasn’t just a story. The third was bending over in the garden to pick up something and doing a roll or something resembling it.

I tried stepping up on the boat trailer steps the other day and didn’t have the strength to push myself up. I guess I’ll have to make sure I have a two-step ladder with me when getting on and off the boat while on the trailer. I guess I could step on the bumper of the truck, but that would require navigating the trailer tongue like a tight-rope act. Believe me, two-foot wide can look like a rope when a couple feet off the ground.

I walked up the spiral staircase the other day and I thought it would be easier if I attached a safety strap to my waste. At least going up, I can use the next step to grab on to. Coming down is a different story trying to navigate with size thirteen shoes on an eight-inch-wide step at the large end and maybe four inches on the pole side. I usually have a death grip on the handrail and the other is hooking the pole as I descend. I think I should keep to only using the stairs if the elevator stops working. Of course, not one reset has been required since the grandkids have left from last Christmas. If you want to test the functionality of something, just let a bunch of grandkids under the age of nine have a go at it.

I still haven’t decided whether it is a klutziness, age, or surgery equilibrium offset. The probable answer is it is a combination of all three. What I fear is it can only get worse. I constantly am looking for a handhold, an easier way to get there, or whether it is necessary in the first place. I’ve resolved to hiring our trusted contractor to do the things I don’t want to do because I know I’ll pay for it in pain derived from something, it can be just using muscles long on lack of use and certainly knowing I’m willing to take shortcuts to be done with it. I portray it as because I’m retired and saved all my life to be able to hire professionals to do it. The reality is that I’m just tired of pain and will do most anything to avoid things I know will cause great amounts of it.